Miranda Burke
Just another biologist
About Me
Just a little about my journey into science.
I was never much of an academic student in secondary school, and I certainly had no intention of taking science-orientated subjects for A-level. For sixth form, I waved goodbye to Fort Pitt Grammar School for Girls and moved to the nearby Chatham Grammar for Boys, but very quickly realised both the school and the subjects I’d chosen were not for me. I didn’t see myself ever attending university or in any one specific subject. I’d already started my first job so, instead of continuing education I left and worked. This led to a decade-long stint in various sales and customer service roles that I learned various skills from, but never found to be truly satisfying.
In 2013, I went through an incredibly difficult time caused by mistreatment in my job. The stress that came from that let me to endeavour in a career change. Aged 26, I enrolled at Canterbury College to an Access to Higher Education course, a 1-year course equivalent to A-levels with the purpose of entry into a university bachelor’s degree. My plan was to complete a teaching degree and pursue a career in teaching. I considered applying for primary education. However, during my access course I fell in love with human biology and submitted all of my university applications for biology instead. I was accepted into my first choice; Royal Holloway.
The next 3 years I fell further in love with biology. I moved away from human biology and towards ecology and evolution. I found the progression of the degree extremely challenging as a mature student, I hadn’t practised maths and many areas of biology since GCSEs, a decade prior. I had a lot of catching up to do! At Royal Holloway I created some amazing relationships with both students and academics. I volunteered for the biological sciences society (BioSoc) as a social media coordinator committee member. This turned out to be a fantastic role that really looked at changing the relationship dynamic between the students and the biological sciences department, as well as improving scientific outreach. I also became financial editor for The Scientists’ Scribe, a student led publication. It was in this role that I realised my enjoyment for non-academic writing.
Approaching the end of my bachelor's, I was not ready to leave university. These really had been the most wonderful times of my life. It was the most that I had thrived in passion and developed intellectually. I started making applications for master’s programmes. I took my chance and applied to Imperial College London with no expectation of being accepted, but I had to aim high. I was delighted when I received my acceptance letter to the master’s by research programme (MRes) in ecology, evolution and conservation. I had pretty much made the decision that I would like to continue to complete a PhD and the MRes allowed me to give it a test run.
Between graduating from Royal Holloway and starting my new position at Silwood Park, Imperial’s rural postgraduate campus, I managed to grab a fantastic work opportunity with Royal Holloway. This involved working with both Professor Mark Brown’s lab group on Dr Harry Siviter’s PhD project, and with Professor Elli Leadbeater’s lab working with Dr Fabio Manfredini. My role was as a field assistant helping with data collection involving honeybees and bumblebees. It was one of the best jobs I had ever had, and I was very sad to finish the role upon starting my master's.
I completed two research projects in my master's, the first in Dr Chris Wilson’s lab looking at hatching Bdelloid Rotifer eggs into a sterile environment. This project in lab-based ecology and extremely fun, it taught and polished a lot of lab skills for me. The second project was field-based ecology with Dr Rich Gill looking at population dynamics of mosquitoes in a tropical island. I was extremely lucky to be able to complete my project in the Maldives.
From the start of my masters I was applying for PhD programmes. However some very serious personal issues made it impossible to really dedicate any substantial time to making applications in addition to successfully completing my master's. I worked part-time at Waitrose & Partners alongside the workload from the university and continued to take on family obligations. By the time I finished the year, I still had not found a place on a PhD programme, so I continued to work at Waitrose & Partners whilst making applications. I received invites for 2 interviews early 2019 for the Waitrose Collaborative Training Programme (CTP) environmental science PhDs, 1 of which I accepted a place for. So here we are today, aged 33 and in my second year of the Waitrose CTP PhD looking at reducing food waste in the supply chain using bio-spectroscopy for early detection of food spoilage.
The last 8 years from when I decided to make my change in career aged 26, has been an incredible journey that I never expected, and never thought I was capable of. I never realised the passion and drive that I had, and certainly never thought I was smart enough to do well in a degree, let alone a masters and to even be considered for a PhD programme. It has been exciting, thrilling and fun however not without difficulty. There have been substantial obstacles throughout: academically, financially and personally that could have ended it all. For now, I am working hard in progressing my career, myself and in making fundamental positive impact.
